Sex Therapist & Registered Relationship Counsellor
Always Wondering If There's Someone Better?
Do you keep wondering if someone better is out there, even when your relationship seems good? Constantly comparing your partner to imagined alternatives can quietly undermine intimacy, attraction and emotional connection. Sex Therapist & Relationship Counsellor, Dr Martha Tara Lee explores why relationship doubts become a recurring pattern, how to distinguish genuine incompatibility from fear of commitment, and what it takes to feel fully present in the relationship you choose.
Always Wondering If There's Someone Better?
When "Better" Is Always Somewhere Else
Do you ever wonder whether there's someone better out there, even when you're in a relationship that seems good?
Perhaps you compare your partner with other people, question whether you've chosen the right person, or imagine a relationship where attraction feels effortless and connection never fades.
These recurring relationship doubts can be exhausting. You may care about your partner yet struggle to feel fully present, always wondering whether something better is waiting elsewhere.
There is a particular exhaustion that comes from never quite arriving in your own life.
You are in a relationship, but part of your attention remains elsewhere — scanning, comparing, wondering if someone else might be more compatible, more exciting, easier. The person in front of you is real, flawed, ordinary. The person you imagine is always better.
This is not occasional daydreaming or passing attraction to others. It is a recurring pattern of keeping alternative possibilities mentally available, sometimes as a way of protecting yourself from vulnerability, disappointment or uncertainty.
Over time, this pattern can make emotional and sexual intimacy more difficult.
1. Why Do I Keep Wondering If There's Someone Better?
Most people assume comparison is about high standards or knowing what you want. In reality, chronic comparison can sometimes be a defence against vulnerability.
Choosing one person means foreclosing others. It means accepting that no relationship will meet every need, that desire fluctuates, that intimacy involves ordinary Tuesdays as much as intense connection.
For people who struggle to tolerate disappointment or imperfection, keeping alternatives alive — even mentally — can provide an escape route from that reality.
The problem is not that you notice attractive people exist. The problem arises when you maintain a parallel mental track of "what else might be available" while ostensibly committed to the present.
You are never fully here. And when you are not fully present, desire may struggle to develop.
Desire often benefits from focus. It requires sustained attention, curiosity about the specific person in front of you, and a willingness to go deeper rather than wider.
When your mind is constantly scanning for better options, attention can become fragmented. The fantasy of someone else becomes more compelling than the reality of your partner — not because they are objectively superior, but because imagined possibilities carry no friction, no conflict, no morning breath.
2. Signs You're Constantly Comparing Your Partner to Others
This pattern shows up in recognisable ways.
You interpret natural dips in attraction as evidence you are with the wrong person, rather than normal fluctuation.
You measure your relationship against an idealised standard that no real partnership could meet.
You are more interested in whether your partner is "good enough" than in deepening connection with them.
You find yourself mentally auditioning replacements during conflict or disconnection.
None of this necessarily means you have high standards. Sometimes, it reflects difficulty accepting that intimacy involves compromise, ordinariness, and periods of lower intensity.
When you cannot tolerate the valleys, you may interpret them as failure rather than rhythm.
3. How Constant Comparison Affects Intimacy and Desire
Living this way can be cognitively and emotionally depleting.
You are essentially maintaining two parallel realities: the actual relationship and the imagined better one.
This divides attention, drains presence, and can prevent the kind of deep focus that intimacy requires.
Over time, it may affect more than relationship satisfaction. It can also interfere with emotional and sexual desire.
As Esther Perel explores in Mating in Captivity (2006), desire and long-term intimacy involve a complex relationship between familiarity, individuality and erotic connection.
When you are constantly evaluating alternatives, you may find it difficult to become fully engaged with the person in front of you.
Your partner risks becoming a placeholder rather than someone you continue to discover.
The relationship may feel flat not necessarily because it lacks potential, but because you are struggling to be present within it.
4. Do Dating Apps Make Relationship Comparison Worse?
Before dating apps, opportunities to meet potential partners were more constrained by social networks, proximity and circumstances.
Today, dating platforms can make potential partners more visible and accessible, creating new opportunities to connect but also more opportunities to compare.
For someone already inclined towards chronic comparison, the apparent abundance of alternatives may reinforce the feeling that a better match is always available.
However, dating-app use is not inherently harmful to relationships. People use these platforms for different reasons, including finding serious relationships, casual connections and companionship (Timmermans & De Caluwé, 2017).
The challenge arises when evaluating possibilities becomes easier than investing attention in a real relationship, with all its uncertainty and imperfection.
A mindset focused entirely on optimisation may encourage continual evaluation: Is this person attractive enough? Compatible enough? Exciting enough?
But intimacy asks a different question: What becomes possible when I stop searching for an ideal and begin understanding the person in front of me?
5. When Relationship Perfectionism Becomes a Trap
Relational perfectionism is not simply about having standards.
It is the belief that the right relationship should feel good all the time, that attraction should remain constant, and that compatibility means an absence of friction.
This is fantasy.
All long-term relationships involve compromise. Desire fluctuates. Intimacy includes stretches of boredom, frustration, or disconnection.
These experiences do not automatically indicate that the relationship is failing.
People caught in comparison patterns may also mistake intensity for compatibility.
They may be drawn to newness, uncertainty or emotional highs — not necessarily because these reflect greater depth, but because they are easier to experience than the quieter, more complex intimacy that develops over time.
When the intensity fades, they may interpret this as evidence that they chose the wrong person.
They begin scanning again.
The cycle repeats.
6. Relationship Doubts or Genuine Incompatibility?
This is not about lowering your standards, accepting mistreatment, or staying in a relationship that is not working.
It is about distinguishing between legitimate incompatibility and difficulty committing your attention.
Genuine incompatibility may involve significant differences in values, life direction, relationship expectations or essential emotional needs.
These differences are not necessarily resolved by trying harder. They require honesty and sometimes the decision to leave.
Chronic comparison, on the other hand, can occur even when a relationship is fundamentally workable.
You may struggle to settle into the relationship, repeatedly wondering whether someone else would be better suited to you.
Your dissatisfaction may partly reflect discomfort with uncertainty, vulnerability or the perceived loss of other possibilities.
The distinction matters.
Not every relationship should be preserved. But not every moment of doubt means you have chosen the wrong person.
7. How to Stop Comparing and Reconnect With Your Partner
Learning to stop living sideways does not necessarily happen through gratitude journaling or positive reframing alone.
It can begin with accepting what choosing actually means.
Choosing one person means accepting that other possibilities will remain unexplored.
This can feel like loss because, in a sense, it is: the loss of fantasy, possibility, and the belief that perfect compatibility exists somewhere if you search long enough.
But choosing can also create the conditions for greater depth.
Intimacy invites you to stop scanning and start inhabiting.
To notice when your mind drifts towards comparison and gently redirect your attention to the relationship you are experiencing.
To remain curious about the person in front of you rather than assuming you already know everything about them.
To recognise that attraction fluctuates and that periods of disconnection are not always evidence of a mistake.
And to ask whether your dissatisfaction reflects something important that needs addressing, or whether it is part of a recurring pattern that follows you from relationship to relationship.
This is not resignation.
It is learning to make choices with greater awareness.
8. When Relationship Counselling May Help
If you repeatedly question whether you are with the right person, compare your partner to imagined alternatives, or struggle to feel emotionally or sexually present, it may be helpful to explore what is driving these patterns.
Sometimes relationship doubts reflect genuine incompatibility or unmet needs.
At other times, they may be connected to relationship anxiety, perfectionism, discomfort with vulnerability, or difficulty tolerating uncertainty.
Relationship counselling can help you explore these concerns without assuming that staying together or separating is necessarily the right outcome.
The aim is to understand your experiences, recognise recurring patterns, and make decisions with greater clarity.
Dr Martha Tara Lee is a relationship and sex therapist and counsellor at The Counselling Place in Singapore. She works with individuals and couples navigating relationship difficulties, intimacy concerns and sexuality-related issues.
If these experiences sound familiar, you do not have to work through them alone.
Explore counselling with Dr Martha Tara Lee and view her booking information.
A Final Thought
When you find yourself comparing, the question worth asking is:
Is this about my partner, or about my discomfort with commitment?
Comparison is not inherently harmful. But when it becomes a way of life, it can prevent the sustained focus that desire and intimacy require.
Better is not always somewhere else.
Sometimes it is here — if you are willing to fully arrive.
References
Finkel, E. J., Hui, C. M., Carswell, K. L., & Larson, G. M. (2014). The suffocation of marriage: Climbing Mount Maslow without enough oxygen. Psychological Inquiry, 25(1), 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2014.878681
Perel, E. (2006). Mating in captivity: Unlocking erotic intelligence. HarperCollins.
Schwartz, B., Ward, A., Monterosso, J., Lyubomirsky, S., White, K., & Lehman, D. R. (2002). Maximizing versus satisficing: Happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(5), 1178–1197. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.5.1178
Timmermans, E., & De Caluwé, E. (2017). Development and validation of the Tinder Motives Scale (TMS). Computers in Human Behavior, 70, 341–350. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.01.028